Vil. 
GAIN robin, bluebird, blackbird, songsparrow 
and meadow lark have returned to Pine 
Hills. It is not essential to fix the exact date of 
arrival nor to be first to note their coming. To 
know that they are on the wing, moving this way, 
is a sufficiently pleasing thought to quicken the 
pulse, give a roseate hue to March snows and 
March brown fields, and to temper her nipping 
winds. 
But the birds are here; the robin back in the 
woods, the bluebird in the orchard, the song- 
sparrow at the foot of Seven Pines in the seed 
crop of last year’s asters and goldenrod, and a 
little farther on, in the upland meadow, sheltered 
by hill and bush, hobnob in a friendly way the 
meadow lark and blackbird. 
“ One swallow does not make a summer,’ but 
the early bird suggests, as in Tennyson’s poem of 
Throstle, the coming of summer — 
“Summer is coming, summer is coming. 
I know it, I know it, I know it. 
Light again, leaf again, life again, love again.” 
Yes, my wild little Poet. 
To the unsympathetic all this will seem a 
stretch of imagery, but, even so, sooner or later 
the actual as beautifully illustrated is sure to 
occur in field and woodland about our homes. 
March is the month of unrest, the season of 
longing for the return of spring and summeér. 
41 
